Legals

The very name ‘Foro’ probably comes from archaic Latin ‘Foras’, meaning “outside, away from
home”, indicating the neutral character that the place had for strangers who came here merely to
visit the marketplace here. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ruined Ancient sculptures
and religious buildings remained submerged underneath the debris, and thus the area remained,
until the nineteenth century, devoted to the sale of livestock, taking the name of Campo
Vaccino.
In 1921, a part of the original area of the Campitelli was detached to form the newly constructed
Celio district. Nonetheless, since it contains the Capitol, the Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum,
it has certainly preserved its greatest touristic importance among the districts of the capital city.
Moreover, it can be said that up to Vittorio Emanuele II, Rione Campitelli was consecrated by
tradition to the Founding Fathers: just think of Romulus on the Palatine, Camillus on the Capitol,
the emperors in the Forum, and Cola di Rienzo. Moreover, one could also evoke the legendary
memories of the patron saints of Rome, all connected to this district: Saints Peter and Paul, Santa
Francesca Romana, San Sebastian, and St. Michael the Archangel. The remaining one of the
seven hills included in Campitelli, the Palatine, and it is indeed the soul of the oldest trades and
settlements that led to the founding of the city. Unlike the Capitol, the Palatine is not adjacent to
the Tiber: with its maximum height of 51 meters above sea level, it is located between the Roman
Forum and the Circus Maximus, and welcomes visitors as an authentic open-air museum. Walking
along the Via Sacra that starts near the Arch of Constantine is a unique experience every single
time. But the essence of the city, the center of prominent political life, trade and rites, as well as religious
practices was the Forum, which we now call the ‘Roman’ Forum but at the time was known
as Forum Magnum.
The Piazza del Campidoglio is still considered - just like it was two millennia ago - the geographical
center of Rome, the reference point to count all road distances with respect to the city. One goes
up there from Piazza Ara Coeli, via a staircase designed by Michelangelo in the mid-sixteenth
century: the square is surrounded by a number of buildings of great historical and institutional
prestige. The square itself was built following the design of Michelangelo, in terms of both its layout
and the geometric pattern of the pavement. Moreover, the current structure of the Capitol is the
result of a complex series of projects, constructions, conversions and renovations that took place
between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. On the northern side of the hill - impressive
in its dazzling whiteness - emerges the Vittoriano, built between 1885 and 1911, and dedicated to
Vittorio Emanuele II and the unification of Italy in 1870. Designed after the First World War also as
a military memorial and home to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, it receives constant attention
from tourists, and indeed precisely for this reason, nowadays it has been the target of heated criticism:
since its visual impact is too massive and aggressive compared to the Antique monuments
behind it, some have labeled it with allusive nicknames like ‘the typewriter’, ‘the wedding cake’, or
‘the inkpot’. A few years ago some even came up with the idea to demolish it; but the outcome of
the controversial debates arising was to finally accept the bulky monument as an entity adopted
on its own right into the urban landscape of the capital.
appraisal